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Analysis of interlingual and intralingual interferences found in writings of efl learners at UTA

Abstract:

In a non-English speaking country, committing errors when writing is an evidence that the learner’s native language system is confronting the target language system. This study aims at investigating the type and source of writing errors committed by Elementary A2 EFL learners at the Technical University of Ambato. The data of study were a total of 170 writings distributed in five different types of narratives (1)“Describing Past Experiences”, 2)“Describing a favorite place”, 3)“Describing someone special”, 4)“Describing preferences”, and 5)“Describing plans for the Future”). The method used to process the information was based on Gass & Selinker (2008) model. The results of the study showed that most of the errors made by second language learners are largely due to intralingual interferences in the form of omissions and substitutions. Learners’ language developmental factors outweigh interlingual transfers and are represented by omissions and substitutions errors. On the other hand, interlingual transfers denote the presence of lexico-semantic and morpho-syntactic elements of learner’s L1.